A few weeks ago at the GSA sponsored 2009 Government Web Managers 2–Day Conference, Kundra further clarified his comments. You can hear him for yourself here … but… What he was saying, I believe, is that IT organizations — and CIOs — need to enable their organization to use technology toward their mission. And that too often CIOs have been CI-Nos — they have been the folks who tell you why something can’t get done, rather then the people you go to when you want to get something done. The challenge now is that people can go around the IT organization to get things done.

I sent Kundra a note letting him know how people were interpreting his comments — and he explained that isn’t what he was inferring.

Essentially, my interpretation of what Kundra is saying is telling IT organizations that if you want to remain relevant, you have to be an enabler. You cannot be the CI-No. And that means looking at all the options out there that can help the agency accomplish its mission — and that may include potentially free tools.

We are late in addressing this critical national need and our response must be focused, aggressive, and well-resourced. We have garnered great momentum in the last few months, and the vision developed in our review is based on the important input we received from industry, academia, the civil liberties and privacy communities, others in the Executive Branch, State governments, Congress, and our international partners. We now have a strong and common view of what is needed to achieve change. Ensuring that cyberspace is sufficiently resilient and trustworthy to support U.S. goals of economic growth, civil liberties and privacy protections, national security, and the continued advancement of democratic institutions requires making cybersecurity a national priority.

* Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris will be all over this story this afternoon. More links to come, but you can find them all here.
Among the people we have heard from today:

The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.

Some background:

* Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s Federal Security Spotlight featuring highlights of a speech by Hathaway. Hear part one here… part two here.

Of course the big question now — who will be the cyber “czar.” (Reuters has an interesting story about the Obama czars. My favorite quote from the story: Obama has “more czars than the Romanovs,” who ruled Russia for three centuries — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

We have been hearing for weeks now that Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration was close to naming a new CIO… and we have heard that it was a woman and we have heard that she came from DOD. We are now hearing a name: Emma Garrison-Alexander, a senior executive at the Defense Department, according to her LinkedIn profile. (I couldn’t find a DOD bio. If you have one, send it along.)

UPDATE to the UPDATE: We now have confirmed that Garrison Alexander is the TSA CIO. Her note to staff is below.

UPDATE: We are hearing that Garrison-Alexander actually started on Tuesday.

One other point: Garrison-Alexander has her doctorate in management, graduating in 2008 from the University of Maryland University College from the Graduate School of Management and Technology program. Her dissertation topic: “The Impact of Knowledge Management on Interagency Collaboration.” I would gladly add that to my reading list. (What can I say — I love this stuff.)

This is not confirmed yet, but… it seems like the pieces are starting to fit together. We’ll let you know when we get confirmation.

UPDATE: This has been confirmed. Here is the note she sent to TSA staff:

All,

It is my pleasure to join TSA as Assistant Administrator for the Office of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer.

I arrive at TSA after more than twenty years with the National Security Agency, starting as an electronic engineer; followed by both technical and managerial assignments in the Research and Development, Technology and Systems, Signals Intelligence, and Information Assurance organizations. These assignments included Senior Operations Officer where I operated on behalf of the Director of NSA in the command and control of time-sensitive signals intelligence and information assurance missions. Most recently, I served as the Deputy Counterterrorism for SIGINT Development Services.

I hold a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, Masters of Science in telecommunications management and Doctorate in management with a focus on technology and information systems.

Over the past few days I have been introduced to many of the employees that make TSA’s management and delivery of quality IT services so highly admired across the Department. I look forward to meeting many more of you in the coming weeks, to learn quickly about TSA’s existing IT successes and challenges, and to work with all of OIT to continue providing top-notch IT services to TSA employees at Headquarters and in the Field.

Next week, OIT will hold an All Hands meeting where I will have the opportunity to introduce myself to all of you in person. Sheila Klein will issue the invitation shortly via email. I look forward to working with all of you.

* Writing a job description in 140-characters: John Monroe, my friend and former colleague over at Federal Computer Week, has a wonderful post soliciting submissions of tweeted job descriptions. As you know, Twitter only allows 140-character submissions. What if you had to write a job description in 140-characters or less. This is one of these posts where you want to read the comments. One of the suggestions: “I read, write, think, create, innovate, to make things no one wants yet, nor can understand…for pay.” Read the post — and the comments — here.

I’ll be on DC’s NewsChannel 8 in the 7:30p ET half-hour — their Federal News Tonight program — and I’ll be talking about (what else) transparency. They stream the show live… and I’ll post the video when they post it.

Thanks for Federal News Radio Internet Editor Dorothy Ramienski, pulled together some notes from that conversation.

* 12,000 visits so far on the Open Government Dialogue site as of this afternoon;
* 42,000 page views
* 600 total unique ideas/posts so far
* 6,000 votes for the different ideas
* participation from every state, as well as visits from over 90 different countries

Kamensky also notes that the most voted on item is one recommended from Republican Minority Leader John Boehner recommendation that there be a 72-hour mandatory waiting period to allow public comment on all spending bills.

Just to details out of the way, our book club “meeting” will take place Friday, June 12 at 2p ET on Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s In Depth with Francis Rose. On that day, the author of the book, Michael Lee Stallard, will join us, as will Martha A. Dorris, the acting Associate Administrator Citizen Services and Communications for the General Services Administration. Dorris actually recommended this book to me — and Stallard has spoken to teams at GSA, so he has some idea of the challenges facing federal agencies.

Just a reminder about how the Federal News Radio Book Club works — it is something akin to the Oprah book club except we talk about books that help feds do their jobs better. So unlike other book clubs, our “meetings” take place on the radio — Federal News Radio 1500 AM. And we’d love to hear your thoughts about these issues. Comments will soon be available here. I have also set up a Facebook event page for the book club.